"Not there!" cried Zorzi desperately. "The small opening on the side, near the floor."
Pasquale uttered several maledictions.
"How should I know?" he asked when he had found the right place. "Am I a night boy? Have I ever tended fires for two pence a night and my supper? There! I go!"
Zorzi could hear his voice still, as he went out.
"A surgeon!" he grumbled. "I should like to see the nose of that surgeon at the door!"
Zorzi cared little who came, so that he got some relief. His head was hot now, and the blood beat in his temples like little fiery hammers, that made a sort of screaming noise in his brain. He saw queer lights in circles, and the beams of the ceiling came down very near, and then suddenly went very far away, so that the room seemed a hundred feet high. The pain filled all his right side, and he even thought he could feel it in his arm.
All at once he started, and as he lay on his back his hands tried to grip the flat wood of the bench, and his eyes were wide open and fixed in a sort of frightened stare.
What if he should go mad with pain? Who would remember the fire in the master's furnace? Worse than that, what safety was there that in his delirium he should not speak of the book that was hidden under the stone, the third from the oven and the fourth from the corner?
His brain whirled but he would not go mad, nor lose consciousness, so long as he had the shadow of free will left. Rather than lie there on his back, he would get off his bench, cost what it might, and drag himself to the mouth of the furnace. There was a supply of wood there, piled up by the night boys for use during the day. He could get to it, even if he had to roll himself over and over on the floor. If he could do that, he could keep his hold upon his consciousness, the touch of the billets would remind him, the heat and the roar of the fire would keep him awake and in his right mind.
He raised himself slowly and put his uninjured foot to the floor. Then, with both hands he lifted the other leg off the bench. He was conscious of an increase of pain, which had seemed impossible. It shot through and through his whole body; and he saw flames. There was only one way to do it, he must get down upon his hands and his left knee and drag himself to the furnace in that way. It was a thing of infinite difficulty and suffering, but he did it. Inch by inch, he got nearer.